Zuni Folktales

of my poor wife and children?”

Then the Horned-toad climbed up to the stomach of the Coyote. “What is this, my friend?” said he, feeling the sides of the Coyote’s food-bag.

“What is it like?” asked the Coyote.

“Wrinkled,” said the Horned-toad, “and filled with a fearful mess of stuff!”

“Oh! mercy! mercy! good daylight! My precious friend, be very careful! That is the very source of my being⁠—my stomach itself!”

“Very well,” said the Horned-toad. Then he moved on somewhat farther and touched the heart of the Coyote, which startled him fearfully. “What is this?” cried the Horned-toad.

“Mercy, mercy! what are you doing?” exclaimed the Coyote.

“Nothing⁠—feeling of your vitals,” was the reply. “What is it?”

“Oh, what is it like?” said the Coyote.

“Shaped like a pine-nut,” said the Horned-toad, “as nearly as I can make out; it keeps leaping so.”

“Leaping, is it?” howled the Coyote. “Mercy! my friend, get away from there! That is the very heart of my being, the thread that ties my existence, the home of my emotions, and my knowledge of daylight. Go away from there, do, I pray you! If you should scratch it ever so little, it would be the death of me, and what would my wife and children do?”

“Hey!” said the Horned-toad, “you wouldn’t be apt to insult me and my people any more if I touched you up there a little, would you?” And he hooked one of his horns into the Coyote’s heart. The Coyote gave one gasp, straightened out his limbs, and expired.

“Ha, ha! you villain! Thus would you have done to me, had you found the chance; thus unto you”⁠—saying which he found his way out and sought the nearest water-pocket he could find.

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So you see from this, which took place in the days of the ancients, it may be inferred that the instinct of meddling with everything that did not concern him, and making a universal nuisance of himself, and desiring to imitate everything that he sees, ready to jump into any trap that is laid for him, is a confirmed instinct with the Coyote, for those are precisely his characteristics today.

Furthermore, Coyotes never insult Horned-toads nowadays, and they keep clear of Burrowing-owls. And ever since then the Burrowing-owls have been speckled with gray and white all over their backs and bosoms, because their ancestors spilled foam over themselves in laughing at the silliness of the Coyote.

Thus shortens my story.

The Coyote Who Killed the Demon Síuiuki

Or, Why Coyotes Run Their Noses Into Deadfalls

It was very long ago, in the days of the ancients. There stood a village in the canyon south of Thunder Mountain where the Gods of Prey all lived with their sisters and mothers: the Mountain Lion, the great Black Bear, the Wildcat, the Gray Wolf, the Eagle, and even the Mole⁠—all the Gods of Prey lived there together with their mothers and sisters. Day after day they went out hunting, for hunting was their business of life, and they were great hunters.

Now, right up on the edge of Thunder Mountain there lived a spotted Demon, named Síuiuki, and whenever the people of the towns round about went hunting, he lay in wait for them and ate them up.

After a long while the Gods of Prey grew discontented, and they said to one another: “What in the world can we do? None of the children of men ever make sacrifices to us, for, whenever our children among men go out hunting, this Demon who lives on the top of Thunder Mountain destroys them and eats them up. What in the world can be done?”

“It would be a good thing if we could kill him,” said some of them.

Now, just down below the house of the Demon, in Wolf Canyon, lived a Coyote, and he had found out where the Gods of Prey lived, and whenever he wanted a feast of sinew and gristle, he went below their houses and gnawed at the bones that they had thrown away, and thus it happened that when the gods were talking together in this way he was near their doorway gnawing a bone, and he heard all they said.

“Yes,” said one or two of the others, “and if anybody will go and kill Síuiuki, we will give him our sister to marry.”

“Aha!” said the Coyote to himself. “Ha, ha!”⁠—and he dropped the bone he was gnawing and cut off for home as fast as ever he could.

Next morning, bright and early, he began to dig into the side of the canyon below the Demon’s home, and after he had dug a great hollow in the side of the arroyo, he rolled a heavy stone into it, and found another, which he placed beside it. Then he brought a great many leg-bones of deer and antelope. Then he found a large bowl and put a lot of yellow medicine-fluid in it, and placed it beside the rock. He then sat down and began to crack the leg-bones with the two stones he had brought there.

The old Demon was not in the habit of rising very early, but when he arose that morning he came out and sat down on the edge of the cliff; there the Coyote was, battering away at the bones and pretending to bathe his own lips with the medicine-fluid.

“I wonder what in the world that little sneak is doing down there,” said the old Demon. So he put on his war-badge and took his bow and arrows, as though he were going out to hunt, and started down to where the Coyote was.

“Hello!” said the Coyote, “how did you pass the night?”

“What in the world are you doing here?” asked the Demon.

“Why, don’t you know?” replied the Coyote. “This is the way I train myself for running, so as to catch the deer; I can run faster than any deer in the country. With my medicine, here, I take the swiftness out of these bones.”

“Is it possible?” said the old Demon.

“Of course it is,”